


Until our chances are spent

by Gabriel4Sam



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: Rebels, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, Post-Order 66, Post-Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, Pre-Star Wars: A New Hope
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-03
Updated: 2018-08-03
Packaged: 2019-06-21 05:03:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15550206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gabriel4Sam/pseuds/Gabriel4Sam
Summary: It's his brothers who rescue Cody, long before the Rebel Alliance even thought about the clones.And General Kenobi? Nobody knows if he's alive, dead in Order 66 or simply missing.





	Until our chances are spent

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thedevilchicken](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/gifts).



> Many, many thanks to the wonderful Wrennette for her beta and for finding a title to this fic.

It was Dogma who rescued Cody.

It was Dogma, but it would rob us of a part of their story to start with that.

First, Dogma rescued himself.

As precise and vicious as Palpatine’s planning was, there were some small mishaps when he wrestled power from the dying Republic, and one of them was a massive escape  from one of the prison blocks on Coruscant.

Dogma had been there since Umbara and he had not been the only clone. Slick was there on treason charges and young Boba…young Boba was there because the world was a bitter place for an orphan.

So, it went like this: Palpatine seized power, the Jedi died, the clones still in the army were changed into flesh puppets, and somewhere deep in the underlevels, Dogma yelled at Slick to stop being such an idiot, threw a thrashing Boba over his shoulder and ran. The younger clone was swearing, every insult he knew and inventing some on the way, but Dogma had no intention to leave him behind.

Dodgma hadn’t reacted quickly enough on Umbara to save his  _ vode _ , but he wouldn’t abandon Boba, and Boba would learn to like it.

So Dogma took Boba and he ran, Slick at his side, like all the Separatists were on their heels. They didn’t stop until finding themselves in the Outer Rim. And then Dogma planned.

Perhaps Dogma wasn’t the best at thinking outside the rulebook, perhaps he had difficulties with disobeying authority figures, or he had, more precisely, before Umbara, but precision, meticulous attention?

Dogma was a champion.

It was slow to begin sometimes, because he liked to know every parameter before taking a decision.

But once he was started, Dogma was unstoppable.

Ten years later, Dogma was running a very successful group, part pirates, part rebels, ninety-five percent of them rescued brothers, with Slick as his second and Boba still there, if affirming every morning that he would soon leave them. They had established a base on an abandoned mining moon and p eople flocked to them. Bounty hunters, low level criminals, people with enough morals to dislike the Empire but no desire to become Rebel Alliance martyrs… Slick even married one, a female Frenk bounty hunter named Twazzi, who made Dogma deeply uncomfortable with her disdain about civilian casualties but who one day, came back to base with a gift for her husband.

A brother.

Bound, hurt, but a brother who only needed some bacta immersion.

“I killed the rest of the patrol to facilitate my job,” she said, “but not one of my brothers-in-law. I have standards.”

Dogma wasn’t listening anymore, because under the helmet, he had found Commander Cody. Oh, he had never meet the man before, but every clone knew who he had been.

“Find me Wooley, would you? Or…who else came from the 212 th ?” Dogma asked Slick, his gaze stuck on Cody.

“Boil, I think. And me, but I’m perhaps not the person he should see first waking up,” Slick said, and on those words, he left Dogma with the former commander.

Commander Cody.

Marshall Commander Cody. Highest ranking clone in the GAR and everybody knew High General Kenobi would have promoted him higher if the rules had permitted.

In the last ten years, they had rescued exactly nine hundred and fifty five brothers, so few compared to  the number of  _ vode _ who had died for the Empire, or who still served it, eyes empty. But most of them had been only soldiers, sergeants sometimes. A lot of commanders had been very close to the Jedi during Order 66, and most of them had died in the desperate efforts of the Jedi to survive.

But now… _ Cody _ .

Even after ten years, Dogma found inside himself the desire to let a commanding officer decide for him, to let someone else bear the weight of the decisions.

Cody. Cody would be perfect to lead them.

He would have been perfect if the first words out of his mouth, once Dogma had explained everything, a de-chipping and a dip in bacta later, weren’t:

“They are your troops. I have no intention to relieve you of your command.”

“They aren’t exactly troops, Commander.”

“You should call me Cody. And they obey you, don’t they?”

Dogma thought about that time Boba had run away and put himself in such a mess that they had needed fifty brothers, three crates of explosives and enough firepower to arm a small moon to rescue him.

“Most of the time,” Dogma said, because he was an honest man.

“Then, you should simply consider me one of them. But I still have a question. What of the Jedi?”

The Jedi.

As a rule, they didn’t talk about the Jedi. They were a ghost, a terrible memory, pain and regret at the same time. Dogma still dreamed of Umbara. Boba still dreamed of Mace Windu. But when Boil dreamed of Kenobi, Dogma understood perfectly it wasn’t with a desire for revenge.

They had met some over the years, even saved two once, but never brought them back to their base of operations.

“You’re of course free to leave to search for  _ him _ ,” Dogma said, as gently as he could and Cody didn’t even pretend it hadn’t been on his mind.

“I think I’ll stay,” Cody still answered.

It was some good years.

Cody hadn’t become Marshall Commander because Kenobi liked him. He had earned it, fair and square. That was a terrible adversary the Empire had gained the day Cody was de-chipped. With his tactical help, they expanded their operation, kidnapping and de-chipping brothers, moving base regularly. Boba Fett earned himself the reputation of the most fearsome, the most efficient bounty hunter in the galaxy, so quick he could almost be on two places at the same time… And if it was always the same face under the helmet, it wasn’t always the same man, but people didn’t need to know that small detail.

Para-military operations don’t come cheap and Boba, the real one, found the whole thing if not hilarious, practical enough to share his name.

They found Captain Rex and two brothers in a desert and Cody and Rex got smashed together in the most spectacular way seen in the Outer Rim in the last ten centuries.

“I miss him,” Cody said, his elocution heavy from alcohol.

“I miss all of them,” Rex added and Cody toasted to Ahsoka Tano and Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan kriffin Kenobi.

“What will I do with you?” asked Dogma when he found them later. “Tell me you secured your weapons before or older brothers or not, you’re on latrine duty!”

“Of course, we’re not shinies,” grumbled Rex.

“I miss being a shiny,” said Cody, “the world made more bloody sense then.” And Dogma sincerely hoped the man, a private person if there ever was one, didn’t remember telling them that once sober again.

The next morning, Dogma gave Cody the carefully worded message they had received from the Rebel Alliance ten days before and that he had left waiting in his terminal, indecisive about the best course to make.

“We’ve grown a lot those two last years since you joined us. It was only a question of time before they asked for a more formal joining than a few moments of help there and here.”

“You’re hesitating. Why?”

“Because some of our people wouldn’t be interested. Because as dangerous as our life is now, it could be worse. Tarkin, Vader, a lot of Moffs…everybody knows that the next favourite will be who decapitate the Alliance for good and salt the earth after that.”

“You should stay here,” Cody said, after a few minutes, “What we do here, rescuing brothers, it’s a good job, even if we have to play bounty hunters and pirates to finance it. And a lot of our crew…well, I prefer to know them with you as a commanding officer and not left to their own devices.”

“Their moral compasses fluctuate a little.”

“But I will go, and those who want to accompany me will be welcome.”

At the end, Cody led four hundred brothers to the Rebel Alliance, who welcomed them with open arms: seasoned warriors despising the Empire with such ferocity were valuable recruits.

The scene that Cody and Rex had played one year before, drinking themselves almost into a coma, happened once again, with a little less alcohol but very much the same need for catharsis once they meet a certain Fulcrum.

“I know he’s dead, now,” said Cody at the end of the bottle, “because he would be right there, fighting with you,” and he was too drunk to understand the complicated emotion playing on the Tortuga face.

“Sleep, Cody,” Ahsoka said, her voice heavy with Force suggestion. “Sleep, old friend, we’ll revisit this theme another day.” And Cody slept, his dreams for once free of guilt and the image of General Kenobi falling off a cliff, carefully guided to much happier paths.

“I still don’t like it.” Kanan Jarrus would murmur, again and again, when he saw them passing in the halls.

“I know,” Ahsoka would answer, ready to have this conversation as many times as her fellow former Jedi needed, “and nobody will force you to work with them. But let them have their peace, for they are as much victim as the Empire as you are.” And then she would run to Cody, who had been integrated directly under General Dodonna with the same rank he had held in the GAR.

“Commander Cody! We have a mission together, briefing in one hour!”

It became a normal sight in the Rebel Alliance to see the two of them working together, leaving together. Yes, most officers ranking as high as Marshall Commander Cody didn’t participate in missions, too many risks of seeing important knowledge fall to Imperial hands, but Fulcrum had never exactly fit into the normal procedures.

A spy. A Jedi. Those people bended the rules, let it be of normal warfare or of physics!

So it wasn’t surprising for anybody that day, when they left together.

“No briefing?” Cody had simply asked, when she had come to the room he shared with Rex.

“No briefing. Just tell Rex you’re leaving with me to be sure he doesn’t dismantle the whole Alliance to find you.” And Cody had followed, because he trusted her. Trusted her so much he didn’t ask questions during the days of careful travel, when they jumped ships, when they waited in small spaceports, when they took the most indirect path.

He didn’t ask questions when the small hut was in sight, just when he saw Ahsoka turn back her eopie.

“Fulcrum?”

“I will come back in one month,” she smiled, “and your demand for permission had been accepted, Commander.”

“I didn’t ask for…”

“Well, I did it for you.” And she left, disappearing in the heat of the desert, leaving behind a very perplexed soldier and, behind his door, a Jedi who would have hyperventilated without a lifetime of working on managing his emotions.

And this how Commander Cody found his General again, how Ben meet Cody and how some old, festering wounds were drained before finally starting to heal.

With the careful planning of a rebel operative, with much tears and a little yelling.

The kisses only came after, after long explanations, after accusations and also some insults.

Cody would never really understand why Obi-Wan had chosen Luke instead of the Rebel Alliance.

Obi-Wan, much more ready to let the Force decide his path, would always be sure of his choices.

Cody would never really accept the silence he had to keep about the Jedi’s survival, even from Rex. There were quite a few angry words about that one.

Obi-Wan would stay his mystical self, always with an aphorism and a nod to the Force to the most normal question.

Every separation would be a distressing one, every damn time, but the reunions… The first kiss after weeks or months, the first caress, the little trinkets Cody brought back from off-worlds, every one of them a testament to his profound knowledge of the stubborn, exasperating, beloved hermit…

Those kisses, those moments would always be worth it.

And as Ahsoka was preparing her ship for her first hyperspace jump, high above the desert, Cody was pressing Obi-Wan on the thin mattress for the first time and murmuring crazy words, tender ones, gentle ones, and he knew, more sure about it that he had ever been about anything, even when he was a shiny.

“I missed you so much,” Obi-Wan murmured and it was true, truer than his act of choosing duty, and young Luke, instead of searching for Cody.

Duty had won but Cody, Cody was there, and it was an answer to an unasked question, a reward and an achievement.

This was worth everything.

 


End file.
